The history of India has been a controversial topic since ages as various groups have either misinterpreted or tweaked the information to favour their political beliefs. With the advent of the digital age, such malpractice of altering historical information is also a possible occurrence.
On 26 June, @AnonGoIWPEdits, a Twitter handle which ‘tracks all anonymous edits of English Wikipedia (ie, w/o editor being logged in) from a wide range of Govt of India IP addresses,’ reported an edit to Jawaharlal Nehru’s Wikipedia page.
The edits which have been traced back to a Government of India IP address depict that Nehru’s grandfather Gangadhar Nehru was a Muslim. The edits also claim that Nehru had an affair with Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of India’s first governor general, Lord Mountbatten.
Nehru’s father Motilal Nehru was not spared as well. Similar edits were made on his page as well.
“All this shows that it is an IP address provided by National Informatics Centre (NIC). It doesn’t say anything more than that,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Centre for Internet and creator of the tracking software. Prakash added that the user who was behind this edit is difficult to be found since it isn’t clear as to who all have access to the NIC network.
The malicious edits stated, “Gangadhar was born as a Muslim by the name of Ghiasuddin Ghazi but changed his name to a Hindu Ganga Dhar to escape British clutches.”
This entire issue has snowballed into a major controversy as The Congress is now blaming the BJP government and PM Narendra Modi for this sensitive act of mischief. Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi alleged that the BJP is behind this act to polarise the electorate ahead of Bihar elections.
“The Wikipedia page editing is the most reprehensible, cheap, undemocratic and gutter level tactic… We cannot even think that in the largest democracy of the world an attempt is made to defame the first PM Pandit Nehru who was a world statesmen,” Singhvi said.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also added that the IT minister and PM must not only apologise to the country but also take corrective measures. Thereby, a full enquiry of the matter has been demanded by the Congress.
Thankfully, Wikipedia’s vigilant reviewers swiftly took care of the issue. How the Congress uses this issue to create a political storm is something that only time will tell.
